Field

Research Interests

Global history; early modern & modern history of India/Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia; Muslims in global history; Muslim interactions with the non-Muslim world; Sufism; the Indian Ocean; Persian & Urdu travel writing; Islamic printing.

Notes

After beginning my career as a historian of Islamic India and Pakistan, I have traced networks of Muslim activity that connect Afghanistan, Iran, the Indian Ocean, Islamic Africa and Central Asia, as well as Muslim diasporas as far apart as Europe, America and Japan. My writings span the domains of global, social, religious, cultural and literary history. My books have ranged over the forms of Islam which evolved among the tribal societies of early modern Afghans to the intersection of religion and colonial service among the Muslim soldiers of the British Empire and the emergence of industrialized religious economies in the nineteenth century Indian Ocean, Atlantic and Pacific arenas. My current book reconstructs the beginnings of modern Middle Eastern and European intellectual exchange by following the first Iranian students to study in Europe between 1812 and 1819.

In recent years, I have focused on positioning Islam and Muslims in global history through such topics as intellectual and technological interchange between Asia and Europe; Muslim global travel writings; the transnational genealogy of Afghan modernism; and the world history of 'Islamic' printing. I have also used the networks forged by Sufi brotherhoods to understand pre-modern and early modern mechanisms of Muslim expansion from the Middle East to China and beyond. One hallmark of my writing has been to join together the study of the early modern and modern periods, not least with regard to the question of multiple globalisms and globalizations.

In methodological terms, much of my work has drawn on the insights of anthropology, an interest that developed as I lived, researched and traveled in India, Chinese Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Israel, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Myanmar and Malaysia. Given the fact that South Asia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, my work seeks to position the region in a global and comparative perspective. To this end, I serve as director of the UCLA Program on Central Asia; on the Association of Asian Studies' South Asia Council (from March 2015); on the Executive Committee of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies; and on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the South Asia Across the Disciplines book series.

Through my initial training in South Asian and Middle East Studies and my abiding interests in Muslims in Asia, Africa and Europe, I endeavor to bring global history into conversation with Islamic history.

"Persian Print and the Stanhope Revolution: Industrialization, Evangelicalism & the Birth of Printing in Early Qajar Iran", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30, 3 (2010). [Persian translation published in Iran Nameh: A Persian Quarterly of Iranian Studies 26, 3-4 (2011)]

"The Uses of Books in a Late Mughal Takiyya: Persianate Knowledge between Person and Paper", Modern Asian Studies 44, 2 (2010).

"Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Trans-Culture and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing", International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, 2 (2009).

"Among the Dissenters: Reciprocal Ethnography in Nineteenth Century Inglistan", Journal of Global History 4, 2 (2009).

"Transgressions of a Holy Fool: A Majzub in Colonial India [Introduction & Translations from the Urdu]", in Barbara D. Metcalf (ed.), Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

"Making Sense of ‘Sufism’ in the Indian Subcontinent: A Survey of Trends", Religion Compass (Blackwell Online, 2008).

"Saints, Rebels and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean, c.1850-1920", in Kai Kresse & Edward Simpson (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean(London/New York: Hurst/Columbia UP, 2007).

"The Faqir and the Subalterns: Mapping the Holy Man in Colonial South Asia", Journal of Asian History 41, 1 (2007).

"Shi'ism, Sufism and Sacred Space in the Deccan: Counter-Narratives of Saintly Identity in the Cult of Shah Nur", in Alessandro Monsutti, Silvia Naef & Farian Sabahi (eds), The Other Shi'ites: From the Mediterranean to Central Asia (Berne, Frankfurt & New York: Peter Lang, 2007).

"Blessed Men and Tribal Politics: Notes on Political Culture in the Indo-Afghan World", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49, 3 (2006).

"Making a 'Muslim' Saint: Writing Customary Religion in an Indian Princely State", Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, 3 (2005), pp.617-633.

"Mirza Hasan Safi 'Ali Shah: A Persian Sufi in the Age of Printing [Introduction and Selected Translations]", in Lloyd Ridgeon (ed.), Religion and Politics in Modern Iran (London/New York: I.B Tauris, 2005), pp.99-112.

"Mystical Missionaries in Hyderabad State: Mu'in Allah Shah and his Sufi Reform Movement", Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, 2 (2005), pp.45-70.

"Translating the Spoken Words of the Saints: Oral Literature and the Sufis of Awrangabad", in Lynne Long (ed.), Religion and Translation: Holy Untranslatable? (Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters, 2005), pp.141-150.

"Stories of Saints and Sultans: Re-membering History at the Sufi Shrines of Aurangabad", Modern Asian Studies 38, 2 (2004), pp.419-446.

"Geography, Empire and Sainthood in the Eighteenth Century Muslim Deccan", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 67, 2 (2004), pp.207-225.

Alongside our existing 12 sub-fields, the History Department supports a number of cross-field clusters. The clusters are intended to attract students and faculty to important themes and current in the historical discipline. The clusters will offer new courses, sponsor outside speakers, and convene Department-based workshops and seminars.